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Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

meribold.org

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Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#61

Post by vladvasiliu »

thesuitonym wrote: post #31

When I say Arch is not stable, I don't mean that you can't leave it running for a long period of time. I mean that it changes. Debian is not stable because you can run it for a long time without crashing (You sure can, but you can also run Debian with daily crashes, depending on what you're running). Debian is stable because it doesn't change. You get security updates, but you don't get feature updates, because featu…

While I agree with your definition of "stable", in my case its effects are reversed: I much prefer having to deal with one change from time to time, than having to apply a big update where possibly "everything changes" all of a sudden. Although, granted, this is much more likely to avoid "yoyo changes", where a rollback is necessary because the new shiny is actually broken.

I didn't take notes and don't remember the specifics, but I have a small VM running on some cloud that only hosts LXC containers, so not much is installed on it. I did an update from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04: multiple dozens of packages were removed, and multiple new ones added.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#62

Post by hs86 »

My last clean Windows installation was in 2007 with Vista, and since then, I ran in-place upgrades to get to the next immediate version. It survived multiple mainboard changes and moved from MBR IDE HDDs to GPT SATA SSDs. (With the help of Acronis/Macrium images)

The next big move would be to change to a Mainboard+CPU with Windows 11 support and an NVMe disk. I wonder how feasible this will be.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#63

Post by kache_ »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #30
kache_ wrote: post #13

I love arch linux. It just works. Even with video games. Steam deck is based on it. Linux really did win desktops. Running on arch for 3 years now.

Arch wiki is a real treasure too. I don't even run arch but use their wiki info all the time.

Precisely. The best part about it (linux distros) is that you can actually fix your issues, while with windows/apple you have to suffer until you get a bug fix, since you don't control the software that runs on your computer

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#64

Post by xfalcox »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #34

I recently switched to an arch flavor because the AUR had a lot of little small utilities that make life better on wayland. Also, it's quite easy to install the latest version of golang and rust, etc. Pros: Documentation is excellent. Better than even Gentoo or Ubuntu's docs. Cons: Arch doesn't have an installer, and seems almost militantly against providing one, or a lot of other little utilities that could improve…

> I recently switched to an arch flavor because the AUR had a lot of little small utilities that make life better on wayland.

Same for me after more than a decade on Ubuntu. Switched to Manjaro Sway so I could have a better life in Wayland.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#65

Post by sophacles »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #30
kache_ wrote: post #13

I love arch linux. It just works. Even with video games. Steam deck is based on it. Linux really did win desktops. Running on arch for 3 years now.

Arch wiki is a real treasure too. I don't even run arch but use their wiki info all the time.

Arch wiki is what made me switch to arch - I was tired of translating from arch-wiki -> whatever debian flavor I was using.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#67

Post by vladvasiliu »

ablob wrote: post #41
renewiltord wrote: post #20

I left my computer in storage for a year while I lived elsewhere and I couldn't upgrade through pacman. There was no simple viable upgrade. The constraints just couldn't be met. Fortunately, all I had to do was reformat / and go again since I keep most user config in /home Really enjoyed it otherwise

You probably cant test it anymore, but I think it might have had something to do with the keys. I had a similar problem with failing upgrades once, until I updated the keyring.

This.

The easy way, usually, is installing the previous keyring packages from the archive.

And maybe peruse the "news" page for any manual intervention required. There aren't many, so for a year of missed updates it should be quick enough.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#68

Post by luciusdomitius »

nfhshy68 wrote: post #51
luciusdomitius wrote: post #5

Mine is around 6-7 years old. Started off as an Antergos on T450s, then moved to T480 and later on I replaced the extra repos and the startup logo with EndeavourOS after the Antergos ones went dark. However, I can see a noticable slowdown and some services occasionally acting weird - once every few months i need to switch to a terminal and use loginctl to unlock my session. I am seriously considering a reinstall, no…

I tried to do a reinstall a while back. Gave up around 4 hours in. Installing arch was easy, getting it how I liked it on the other hand. That was gonna take another couple weekends of figuring out what I did 5 years ago to make X work just right.

I expect the same, but on the other hand many things related to X configuration have improved since then (dpi, multi-screen, etc), so I was hoping the result would be better. I need only xfce, appmenu and plank anyway.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#69

Post by zdragnar »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #40

Having to debug X or audio breaking several times even over 10 years is a non-starter. Had these issues 0 times over 10 years on mac, albeit on several machines, but I think it’s extremely rare for someone to reinstall Mac OS ever. Only time I did it was when I tried to setup a hackintosh and that really broke some things.

I get that some people don't like tinkering. They want something that will always Just Work. Some of my friends who were long time linux uses switched to macs and stayed there.

MacOS wasn't that for me- brew was the cause of no shortage of pain, but even that could have been lived with. It's also not exactly stable- one company I worked for (about 7 years total) had a blanket request that people not update OSX to new versions for a few weeks or months while it was tested to make sure that the bugs had been ironed out- anyone who upgraded before then was on their own if they ran into issues.

Even that, I could (and did, when I had to) tolerate.

I hate the UI. It doesn't jive with how I want to operate. Settings exist for some things, but not others. It's just not my cup of tea, and I'm happier tinkering a bit to get exactly what I want.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#70

Post by sgtnoodle »

JLCarveth wrote: post #8

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

There's really not very much magic involved. The root filesystem is just a collection of directories and files. The kernel is just a binary blob, usually stored in /boot. You perhaps need an initial ramdisk tailored to your configuration, but that's usually just running a script. The only really arcane bit is bootloading the kernel. With modern x86 systems EFI does it, and so you just need a correctly formatted fat32 EFI partition.
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